When President Biden signed a bill requiring that TikTok be divested from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, members of Congress hailed the law as a blow to Beijing. They shouldn’t be so quick to celebrate. The law would at best partially mitigate the hazards of misinformation or the risks to national security posed by China. The Communist Party, meanwhile, looks forward to a propaganda windfall, prizing off Washington’s mantle as champion of a free and open internet.
当拜登总统签署法案，要求TikTok必须从它的中国所有者——字节跳动剥离时，国会议员欢呼这项法律是对北京的打击。他们高兴得太早。这项法律最多只能部分减轻错误信息的危害，或中国对国家安全构成的风险。与此同时，中共正期待着宣传上的意外收获，华盛顿作为自由开放互联网拥护者的形象被破坏了。
America’s moral authority on maintaining open internet platforms will look very different if it bans TikTok. After years of enduring American sermonizing about free speech and open trade, autocrats would now be able to cite Washington’s own example when they interfere with speech platforms that displease them.
如果美国禁止TikTok，它在维护开放互联网平台方面的道德权威将大打折扣。多年来，美国一直在鼓吹言论自由和开放贸易，现在，专制领导人在干预令其不悦的言论平台时，就能引用华盛顿自己的例子了。
Sponsors of the law say its purpose — prohibiting access to TikTok if it’s not sold to an American entity — is to sever the short-video app’s links to China’s Communist Party. The reality is that the American government will likely end up banning TikTok, turning it off for 170 million American users. Last week, TikTok filed suit to challenge the law. It is not only that nine months is a tight timeline for a corporate sale of this complexity; it’s also that antitrust review alone often takes as long. A tech company like Meta or Google is unlikely to surmount the government’s concerns of acquiring a leading competitor, and there’s no guarantee that a private equity or investor group will be able to pull off this politically fraught deal.
法案发起人称其目的是切断这个短视频应用与中共的联系；如果不卖给美国实体，就禁止访问TikTok。现实情况是，美国政府很可能最终禁止TikTok，使1.7亿美国用户无法使用。上周，TikTok提起诉讼，对该法律发起挑战。对于如此复杂的企业出售而言，九个月的交易时间太紧迫，单单反垄断审查通常就需要这么长的时间。像Meta或谷歌这样的科技公司不太可能解决政府对它们收购主要竞争对手的顾虑，私募股权或投资集团也不能保证一定可以完成这笔充满政治风险的交易。
More decisive for TikTok’s destiny in the United States is the will of the Communist Party. In 2020, China’s Ministry of Commerce revised its technology export rules to assert control over the export of specialized algorithms. It has left little doubt that the legal change gives the state discretion to reject the sale of TikTok’s algorithm to any foreign entity. Signaling so in its typically oblique way, state media featured the comments of a professor saying exactly that. Whatever the wishes of ByteDance executives or its investors, any sale of TikTok will require Beijing’s blessing.
对于TikTok在美国的命运，中共的意志才更具决定性。2020年，中国商务部修订了技术出口规则，对专业算法的出口实施管制。毫无疑问，法律变化赋予了它向任何外国实体出售TikTok算法的自由裁量权。中国的官方媒体以其典型的拐弯抹角的方式表明了这一点，它们所引用的一位教授的置评正是这样说的。无论字节跳动的高管或其投资者的意愿如何，出售TikTok都需要北京方面的批准。
None is forthcoming. Since 2020 and again in recent months, official Chinese voices have railed against a potential divestment. Government spokesmen have denounced the deal’s “robber’s logic.” China’s leaders gain little from permitting a sale. The party is not especially concerned for the interests of ByteDance’s financial investors (who are mostly global institutional investors), nor does Beijing seem to mind an opportunity to jerk the leash of ByteDance, whose founder once issued a groveling apology for failing to uphold “socialist core values.”
这种批准不会出现。自2020年以来，以及最近几个月，中国官方一直在抨击潜在的剥离。政府发言人谴责这笔交易是“强盗逻辑”。中国领导人从批准出售中几乎得不到什么好处。共产党并不特别关心字节跳动的投资者的利益（他们大多是全球机构投资者），似乎也不介意借机给字节跳动一点颜色看看，它的创始人曾经因为未坚守“社会主义核心价值观”而发表公开信，低声下气地道歉。
Most important, Beijing may well see the law’s passage as an opportunity to revel in Washington’s hypocrisy: America’s answer to the Great Firewall. The forced sale of TikTok will make American government officials’ protests against China’s blocks on Western social media platforms and foreign sites (including The New York Times) ring hollow, even though Beijing controls the internet far more comprehensively. American economic nationalists haveargued that since China doesn’t allow the operation of Facebook, Snap, X or Instagram within its borders, America should reciprocate. But at what point does matching China at its own game become a betrayal of American values?
最重要的是，北京很可能将该法案的通过视为一个机会，可以借此拿华盛顿的虚伪大做文章：这就是美国版的防火长城。强制出售TikTok将使美国政府官员对中国封锁西方社交媒体平台和外国网站（包括《纽约时报》）的抗议变得空洞，尽管中国政府对互联网的控制要全面得多。美国经济民族主义者已经认为，既然中国不允许Facebook、Snap、X或Instagram在境内运营，那么美国就应该做出回应。但是，什么时候像这样以其人之道还治其人之身会变成对美国价值观的背叛？
These charges of hypocrisy will resonate beyond China’s borders. After Twitter deleted a tweet by the Nigerian president in 2021, which intimated violence against an ethnic group, Nigeria banned the app. The government cited concerns about misinformation and fake news. The U.S. State Department recognized that the Nigerian government was stifling speech and issued a statement, saying: “Unduly restricting the ability of Nigerians to report, gather and disseminate opinions and information has no place in a democracy.” Seven months later, Nigeria lifted the ban.
这些关于虚伪的指控将在中国境外引起反响。2021年，Twitter删除了尼日利亚总统的一条推文，该推文暗示要对一个族群实施暴力。尼日利亚随后禁止了这款应用，政府称那是出于对不实信息和假新闻的担忧。美国国务院意识到尼日利亚政府正在扼杀言论自由，并发表声明称：“过度限制尼日利亚人报道、收集和传播意见和信息的能力，在一个民主国家是站不住脚的。”七个月后，尼日利亚取消了这项禁令。
The law to force a sale of TikTok will not address the failures of American tech giants who continue to profit from polarizing content. Taking down TikTok will remove some toxic posts, but do little to redress the harms to minors from Snap and Instagram. Impassioned controversies, from campus protests to the November election, travel extensively on other platforms as well, which have no lack of deceptive content from potential state actors.
强制出售TikTok的法律并不能解决美国科技巨头继续从两极分化的内容中获利的问题。关闭TikTok将除掉一些有毒的帖子，但对于解决Snap和Instagram给未成年人造成的伤害问题却几乎无济于事。从校园抗议到11月的大选，激烈的争议在其他平台上也广泛传播，这些平台上同样存在来自潜在国家行为者的欺骗性内容。
Neither are dataconcerns dispositive. American corporations, and indeed the U.S. government, have been abysmal stewards of Americans’ data, allowing Chinese hackersaccess to information as damaging as anything gleaned from TikTok user profiles. Many of the app’s sins are common to other Silicon Valley transgressors.
强制出售也不能解决对数据的担忧。美国公司乃至美国政府一直把美国人的数据管得乱七八糟，使得中国黑客获取的信息就破坏性来说完全不输他们从TikTok用户档案中收集的任何信息。这款应用的许多罪过是其他硅谷违规者所共有的。
Critics allege that the Chinese Communist Party directly manipulates TikTok, tilting the platform toward narratives favoring Beijing’s interests. True or not — at present, public evidence is suggestive but circumstantial — Beijing still has plenty of other ways to influence the views of Americans. In the lead-up to the 2016 American presidential election, Facebook and other platforms unwittingly enabled Russian meddling to denigrate Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. If China is determined to meddle in American elections, it has plenty of other tools it can use. Like anyone else, Beijing can buy influencers on YouTube or Instagram while covering its tracks. A ban on TikTok hardly cleans up the information ecosystem; establishing common privacy and algorithmic practices for all the tech giants will.
批评者声称中共直接操控TikTok，使其向着有利于北京利益的叙述倾斜。无论真假——目前的公开证据提示了一些问题，但仍然是间接证据——北京仍有许多其他方式来影响美国人的观点。在2016年美国总统选举之前，Facebook和其他平台无意中帮助了俄罗斯插手诋毁希拉里·克林顿的候选资格。如果中国决心干预美国大选，它有许多其他工具可以利用。与其他人一样，北京可以在YouTube或Instagram上收买意见领袖，同时掩盖自己的行踪。对TikTok的禁令并不能从根本上解决信息生态系统的问题；为所有科技巨头建立共同的隐私和算法规范才是关键。
The new law faces a flurry of litigation — challenges brought by TikTok’s attorneys, which bring accusations of trampling constitutional speech and crippling legitimate commerce. It may well be struck down on First Amendment grounds. TikTok has already prevailed in several federal courts, and survived bans from the Trump administration in 2020. Litigation threatens to drag on for months against the backdrop of a contentious election cycle. And as TikTok continues to operate, Mr. Biden himself hardly acts as if the app is menacing our national security. His re-election campaign persists in using TikTok to reach younger voters.
新的法律面临着一系列诉讼——TikTok的律师提出了挑战，他们指控其践踏宪法赋予的言论自由，破坏合法的商业。它很可能以第一修正案为由被推翻。TikTok已经在几个联邦法院胜诉，并在2020年经受住了特朗普政府的禁令。在充满争议的选举周期背景下，诉讼有可能拖延数月。随着TikTok的继续运营，拜登本人几乎没有表现出该应用程序正在威胁我国安全的样子。他的连任竞选活动坚持使用TikTok来吸引年轻选民。
America is now committed to a long legal fight to ban TikTok. A potential defeat won’t look good, but victory may bear bitter fruit as well: the muddling of our values at home and a propaganda win for autocrats abroad.
为了禁止TikTok，美国现在正在打一场长期的法律战。万一失败肯定不好看，但胜利也可能结出苦果：在国内，我们的价值观被玷污，而在国外，专制者取得宣传的胜利。